Archives for February 2026

Part 1: Introduction | Part 2: The Days of Abraham | Part 3: Egypt | Part 4: Canaan | Part 5: David | Part 6: Egypt vs Jerusalem 

With Egypt’s decline in the 9^th century BC, Assyria rose to dominate the Ancient Near East. Its part in the biblical narrative is significant; it threatens both Israel and Judah, imposes tribute payments, and eventually attacks them both militarily, conquering Israel and exiling its leadership, and conquering much of Judah (2K 18.13) until its siege of Jerusalem is, um, interrupted by the Angel of the Lord (2K 19.35-37). 

There are parallels in the ancient soil. 

The Black Obelisk 

The Black Obelisk was erected by Shalmanezer III (858-824 BC) to proclaim his fame, Ozymandius-style. Among other things, it includes carvings of five different kings paying tribute to him. The second of these is “Yaua of Bit Omri.” Elsewhere it refers to “Yahua, son of Hubiri.” 

The Bible does relate that Jehu’s reign as king of Israel overlapped Shalmanezer III’s by nearly 30 years. However, he was not of the “house of [bit] Omri”; he was a commoner who took the throne by force (2K 9.13-14) from Joram, who was Omri’s descendant. Given Omri’s significance, it is easy to see that the Assyrian king might have gotten the genealogy wrong. 

The Calah Inscription 

A large number of inscriptions was unearthed at Calah (modern Nimrud, near Mosul), Iraq, in the mid-1800s. One of them, by Tiglath-Pileser III (745-727 BC; called “Pul” in the Bible,) mentions a biblical event: 

“The land of Bit-Humria [literally Omri-Land, that is Israel] …all of its people […to] Assyria I carried off. Pekah, their king, [I/they ki]lled…and Hoshea [as king] I appointed over them. 10 talents of gold, x talents of silver, [with] their [property] I received from them and [to Assyria I carried] them off.” 

This not only describes the deportation to Assyria, but it specifically mentions Pul’s replacing of Pekah with his puppet Hoshea (2K 15.29-39). The biblical account does not say here that Hoshea’s installation was at Pul’s insistence; perhaps it was, or perhaps the emperor just took credit for it. Megalomania was influential in those days. 

The Taylor Cylinder 

This is perhaps the most well-known Assyrian artifact having to do with the Bible. It describes Sennacherib’s siege of Jerusalem, which I mentioned at the beginning of this post. He besieges the city (2K 18.13ff), and Hezekiah prays to the Lord for deliverance (2K 19.14ff). God responds by slaughtering the entire besieging army as they sleep in their tents (2K 19.35ff), and Sennacherib returns to Nineveh. 

The Taylor Cylinder describes this campaign from the perspective of Sennacherib himself. He lists all the cities he has conquered—and they are many. But when he comes to Jerusalem, which of course would be the greatest prize, he says simply, 

“I locked [Hezekiah] up within Jerusalem, his royal city, like a bird in a cage. I surrounded him with earthworks, and made it unthinkable for him to exit by the city gate.” 

But he does not say he conquered the city. And he does not describe the outcome; Ancient Near Eastern dictators were not inclined to say, “And then, you know, the oddest thing happened … ” 

Tribute Sherd 

 Emek Tzurim National Park is an area in the City of David, south of the Temple Mount, where soil from various archaeological sites is taken to be sifted for artifacts. In 2025 scholars published a significant find: a small sherd (piece of broken pottery, used for paper in those days) with cuneiform writing, dated to about 700 BC. Of course, cuneiform was a Mesopotamian, not Israelite, script. The clay appears to come from Nineveh or thereabouts. 

The writing relates that Judah’s tribute payment is overdue. We know that Judah was paying tribute at this time, during the reigns of Hezekiah and Manasseh (2K 18.14). This places Assyrian dominance in Jerusalem in this period. 

We’re seeing the connections between biblical and archaeological history grow more frequent—unsurprisingly, since more recent finds are likely to be more plentiful. 

Next time, Jerusalem in the Babylonian period. 

Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash

Part 1: Introduction | Part 2: The Days of Abraham | Part 3: Egypt | Part 4: Canaan | Part 5: David 

After David and Solomon, civil war split the kingdom into Northern (Israel) and Southern (Judah) entities. Both kingdoms fell into idolatry; God judged Israel with exile to Assyria in 722 BC, and Judah with exile to Babylon in 3 deportations, 606, 596, and 586 BC. Archaeological finds have spoken of biblical figures and places throughout the period. 

During this time the Ancient Near East was a battleground among 3 competitors for King of the Hill: Egypt, Assyria, and (later) Babylon. During Solomon’s reign Egypt still dominated the region. When Solomon tried to kill Jeroboam toward the end of his reign, Shishak, king of Egypt, gave him asylum (1K 11.40). Later, when Rehoboam, Solomon’s son, was king, Shishak invaded Judah and besieged Jerusalem (1K 14.25; 2Ch 12.2). When the city’s residents humbled themselves and cried to God for help, he promised them deliverance (2Ch 12.7). Shishak did considerable looting, but he did not destroy the city (2Ch 12.9). 

⁶Whereupon the princes of Israel and the king humbled themselves; and they said, The Lord is righteous. ⁷And when the Lord saw that they humbled themselves, the word of the Lord came to Shemaiah, saying, They have humbled themselves; therefore I will not destroy them, but I will grant them some deliverance; and my wrath shall not be poured out upon Jerusalem by the hand of \ Shishak. ⁸Nevertheless they shall be his servants; that they may know my service, and the service of the kingdoms of the countries. ⁹So Shishak king of Egypt came up against Jerusalem, and took away the treasures of the house of the Lord, and the treasures of the king’s house; he took all: he carried away also the shields of gold which Solomon had made (2Ch 12.6-9). 

Archaeologists have found several inscriptions mentioning a Pharaoh “Sheshonq” who reigned at this time. The most famous of these was found at a gateway called the Bubastite Portal, in Luxor, Egypt, at the Temple of Karnak. It lists the cities Sheshonq conquered in both Israel and Judah—more than 150 of them, including Megiddo, where a burn layer has been found from this period, indicating a major destruction. 

But there is no contemporaneous burn layer from Jerusalem. And the inscription does not appear to mention that city, which of course would have been the biggest prize had it been captured. 

But Megiddo? Another inscription was found there, in northern Israel, in 1925. Though little of the inscription remains, it does place Sheshonq in the area of Megiddo during the campaign described in the Bible, and consistent with the Bubastite inscription. 

One other interesting coincidence between the archaeological record of Sheshonq and the biblical account: the Bible mentions that the invading force included “the Lubim” and “the Sukkiim” (2Ch 12.3). These were from we today call Libya, to the west of Egypt and across miles of the Sahara Desert. What were they doing there? 

Well, the archaeological record shows that Sheshonq was not Egyptian, but Libyan; in fact he and his Pharaonic descendants are called “the Libyan Dynasty” by Egyptologists. 

What I find especially interesting about these coincidences, and many other similar ones, is that they’re so minor. By that I mean that they’re not the kinds of things that a later forger would insert into the biblical account to make it seem legitimate.  

Sukkiim? 

Seriously? 

As these finds and many others to come in this series robustly demonstrate, the Scripture is an accurate historical document. 

Next time: Assyria. 

Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash

Part 1: Introduction | Part 2: The Days of Abraham | Part 3: Egypt | Part 4: Canaan  

What followed the invasion of Canaan was a time of loose confederation that we call “the period of the Judges.” 

Snippets from this period are recorded for us in, not surprisingly, the book of Judges. A repeated theme in that book is that “there was no king in Israel; everyone did what was right in his own eyes” (Jdg 17.6; 18.1; 19.1; 21.25). Those days saw a regular cycle of apostasy, invasion, repentance, deliverance through a judge, and then apostasy again. 

There are a good many archaeological finds from this period—what archaeologists call the Late Bronze and Early Iron Ages—but none that provide clear links to the wider “secular” history, so far as I am aware. No inscriptions naming any of the judges; no donkey jawbones with odd scratch marks. 

Given the biblical theme, we should expect that the political situation would be unstable and that yearning for a king and the resultant stability would grow—similar, I suppose, to the way the US Articles of Confederation eventuated in a robust Constitution and balanced but limited federal government. 

As we know, the first king, Saul, was a disappointment, but while he was still king, God had the prophet Samuel appoint his successor, the shepherd boy David (1S 16.12-13). David ended up reigning for 40 years, setting a standard that outshone all that followed, with the possible exception of his son Solomon. 

We have some interesting archaeology referencing David. 

Tel Dan Stele 

For more than two centuries after the rise of rationalism in the 18^th century, biblical criticism viewed the David / Solomon stories as the stuff of legends, attempts by an insignificant Levant-based tribe to legitimize its past. No historical Saul or Goliath or Bathsheba or visit of the Queen of Sheba. No wise Solomon, and no David. Legends all. 

Then, in 1993, archaeologists uncovered a paved courtyard in the northern city of Dan, which had been a worship center set up by Jeroboam I, the northern king after the split from Solomon’s son Rehoboam (1K 12.28-29). Upon turning over some of the paving stones, they found writing on the undersides. Three of the stones had been repurposed from a stele that had been broken up. The stele and inscription were ordered in the 9^th century BC, probably by Hazael, king of Syria/Damascus, in commemoration of his attack on the kingdoms of Israel and Judah. (You can understand why the memorial would have been broken up after Hazael’s dominance was over.) 

The key element in the inscription is the king’s reference to “Ahaziah the son of Jehoram king of the house of David” (the phrase “the house of David” highlighted white in the photo linked above). This is the first known historical reference to David. 

In the years since its discovery, there have been arguments over details of interpretation (as there pretty much always are in archaeology), but most scholars agree that this is a reference to King David, and that he was a historical figure. 

Mesha Stele (Moabite Stone) 

Mesha was king of Moab, just east of the Dead Sea, in the mid-9^th century BC, during and just after the reigns of Jehoshaphat in Judah and Ahab in Israel. This stele, discovered in 1868, has been recognized for decades as containing the earliest historical reference to YHWH, the God of Israel. 

But after the discovery of the Tel Dan stele, scholars looked more closely at this artifact to see whether it too might contain a reference to the house (“BT”) of David (“DWD”). In “a badly damaged section” they found “BT[?]WD,” which would say that, if the damaged spot contained the letter “D.” 

Maybe, maybe not. 

(Yes, I just linked to a Wikipedia article, which is just not done in academic writing, but this article is actually pretty good.) 

So David has been rescued from the mists of legend to actual historical status. 

Ever onward. 

Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash